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No bread is an island

...entire of itself. (With apologies to John Donne!)

I live and breathe breadmaking. I’m an evangelist who would like everyone to make his or her own bread. I want to demystify breadmaking and show it as the easy everyday craft that it is. To this end I endeavour to make my recipes as simple and as foolproof as I possibly can.

I call my blog 'No bread is an island' because every bread is connected to another bread. So a spicy fruit bun with a cross on top is a hot cross bun. This fruit dough will also make a fruit loaf - or Chelsea buns or a Swedish tea ring...

I'm also a vegan, so I have lots of vegan recipes on here - and I'm adding more all the time.

About Me

Torn away from the bosom of my family at the tender age of 18 - and never lived in my home town of Blackburn again. The RAF took me to HK; After a hitch of four years I emigrated to Australia and joined the RAAF, which took me to HK where I met my wife of 43 years. I then joined GCHQ which took me (us, with 2 children now) back to HK. Retired at 55, trained as a teacher of adults, gained a 2:1 in Teaching and Training at Plymouth Uni (which I thought went well with the 2 'O' levels with which I left school). And I've been teaching breadmaking ever since. Now running 6 or 7 classes a week, plus the odd Saturday workshop. My passion is breadmaking - or perhaps I should say the teaching of breadmaking; I'm also very interested in early development; And I like to cook - but I consider myself to be pretty average. I have a wife, two children, a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law and three grandchildren, (who can all make bread) who come and stay with us in the holidays and half-terms. Away from my family, I'm happiest teaching a Family Learning group, with parents and children, none of whom have made bread before. I get a real buzz out of turning people onto breadmaking.

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Monday, 3 March 2014

5:2 DIET VEGETABLE CURRY FOR 98 CALORIES! (NOW 94cals!)

3/03/14My fast day dinner today comes in at 94 calories - a new low! (Recipe further down this post.)I made a few tweaks - leaving out the cumin seeds and substituting asafoetida and mushroom sauce instead of soy sauce. I toyed with the idea of only using half a tin of tomatoes, since the curry already tasted wonderful before any tomatoes were added. In the event I added the whole tin, not wishing to bother with the faff of having a dish of tomatoes hanging round in the fridge.Weirdly, the smell is making my juices run - but I'n not in the least bit hungry, despite not eating since 7pm last night (it's now 5.30pm). 23/02/14I’ve just set an all-time record low (for me) for a
fast day meal – just a simple veg curry, but it was so tasty and full of flavor
and completely filled me up. Here are the ingredients I used - over here for the method:

Total 195 calories. Divided in two this
gave me 4 large serving spoons of curry – so, 98 calories altogether!

This left me very well fed, and, by staying
away from the kitchen for a good half hour, I avoided adding anything else.

I’ve found, over the 2 years I’ve been
practicing IF, that if I do stick to just a low calorie dinner, I’ll be
satisfied with that. If I add beans or a microwaved potato, I find I want to
push myself up to the 600 calories that, as a bloke, IF allows.

This fast, however, was a little different
from my usual fasts, which generally begin with my final bite of dinner the day
before. This time, not planning to fast today, I ate half a bar of Lindt’s
Chilli Chocolate at around 10pm. So my fast didn’t really start until then!
However, strictly speaking, that was only 275 cals – so, with my 98 for dinner
today, I’ve had 373 calories in the last 27 hours, well below the magic 600
figure!

I decided to fast today since I skipped
breakfast, as I often do, and found myself travelling back home over lunch time
– so it just made sense to fast today, and have a Sunday dinner tomorrow!

This curry is an excellent basis for a range of further dishes - chilli non carne - lasagne (layered with potato instead of pasta - simply glorious!) - vegetarian Bolognese sauce - rich ragu pie, and many more. All these are to be found in the link below.

For all the 5:2 fasting vegetarian/vegan dishes on my blog, click here.